Visit us

Follow us

Search KidSpot

How to patch jeans

By Cintia from my poppet |

If your kids are constantly wearing the knees out of their pants or jeans, you are going to love this easy-to-follow tutorial on how to patch them. This patching technique is useful for all trousers, big or small, but especially small. And don't limit yourself to making patches solely out of denim - try patches in prints or fun shapes like a heart or star.

What you need:

the jeans or pants you need to patch

fabric for the patches - we used a piece of denim

sewing machine

seam ripper

thread

scissors

pins

Activity:

Step 1. Iron the jeans you want to patch. They don't have holes in them but can be very thin in the knees, like the jeans we've used here.

Step 2. Cut out two matching patches, they can be any shape you like.

Step 3. Lay them over the knees to check size and position.

Step 4. You may like to machine stitch a criss cross pattern on the patches to add interest like we've done (but you don't have to).

Step 5. Now the secret trick to make patching jeans a whole lot easier - even on the smallest of kids' garments - is unpicking the side seam of the leg. On jeans, choose the seam that isn't double stitched. Unpick as far as you can without unpicking the cuff. This means you can open the leg out flat to comfortably use the sewing machine.

Step 6. Pin the knee patches into place.

Step 7. Now with a thread that matches the colour of the patch, use a wide zig-zag stitch (satin stitch) to sew the patch onto the leg.

Step 8. The inside side of the sewn patch should look like the picture in our tutorial.

Step 9. Turn the jeans inside out and re-sew the seam that you previously unpicked. Zig zag or use a serge raw edge stitch if desired.

Step 10. Now you're all done! Check out how groovy these old jeans look.